Questioned by MPs about closing the so-called "iPlayer loophole" which allows viewers to watch content on-demand without paying a licence fee, Lord Hall said: "It is the next stage of myBBC and how we move towards mandatory sign-in and are there things we should be offering for free before that."

He added: "At the moment our thinking is around how we expand the sign-in and with what data. We would like to do postcode and date of birth."

Lord Hall said the BBC was thinking about 'how we expand the sign-in'Credit:
Leon Neal /AFP

However, he said it was still too early to say if using that data for sign-in would allow the BBC to determine if the user had indeed paid the fee.

Currently viewers can enter a user name and password to be able to view programmes that are targeted specifically at them.